OK! MAGAZINE
Date: 1993
Article by April Shaw
As well as busily working on her second album, best-selling singer Beverley Craven also has her young baby daughter to keep her occupied.
In 1986 talented and beautiful young singer Beverley Craven, was living on the dole in south London with just her keyboard, and Jerry, her Staffordshire bull terrier crossbreed bitch, for company. Today, she's an international star, and though she may live north of the river with her boyfriend Colin Campsie, lead singer with The Quick, and baby daughter Mollie, both these
precious companions from her early days are still with her.
Taking time off from recording her eagerly awaited second album (her first went double platinum) Beverley relaxes at home.
" I have lived through the most complete change. Now I have success, I'm living with my boyfriend and we have a baby," says the 28-year-old singer. "For a long time I was extremely isolated. Now it's all finally sunk in and I'm ready to go off again, but I did need time to just sit back and gasp."
The experience of those early difficult East Dulwich days have, she says, taught her to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground, and to rely exclusively upon her own efforts. "I didn't really get a lot of help from friends. It's such a cut-throat, hard business out there with everyone struggling. People were very honest about where my songs were going wrong, and I guess that gave me a tough outer shell to deal with criticism. I keep myself to myself now. I have to be on my own when writing."
An unashamed romantic, her songs are intimate and haunting ballads, filled with emotion. "I'm a slow writer," she reflects. "I can't just write to order. I like to capture a moment, relate a story as concisely as possible with a melody that fits. And it has to be perfect." Her skill in singing about emotion gave us Promise Me, the number three hit single which became so special to the wives of soldiers fighting in the Gulf War.
Beverley was born in Sri Lanka whilst her Leeds-born father was working for Kodak there, but returned to Hertfordshire, aged one and a half where she grew up. She first came to the public eye as a swimmer, competing against Sharron Davies at junior national championship level. Ask her about her swimming prowess these days and she crumples with embarrassment. "It only takes me a couple of lengths before I start to feel sick and giddy, which is pathetic when you think that when I was younger that would be a warm-up. And I'd easily have swum a couple of miles at each session."
As the world now knows, Beverley wasn't destined for Olympic glory, but for musical stardom, and she credits one woman as the inspiration behind her success. "It has to be Kate Bush!" she exclaims with disarming schoolgirl admiration. "She started it all for me. I identified with her so much. She was who she was, not trying to fit into anything else, and I loved her for it."
But her success didn't come easy. Beverley did her share of day jobs, which included chambermaiding, waitressing and singing with two Italian men from eight till two every morning at a restaurant which she remembers as "hell".
"I bit my lip while I was getting the rough edge of all those dreadful jobs, because I had the romantic conviction that one day I'd be sitting talking to a journalist! So I'd dream about that while polishing bannisters or silver-serving potatoes."
By the end of her first tour in February 1991, her London concert at the Duke of York Theatre had sold out, and the follow up to Promise Me entitled Holding On reached the top five. Beverley was also expecting her first child.
It was a tough nine months. "My pregnancy was horrible," remembers the singer who won the 1992 Best British Newcomer Brits Award. "I was ill all the time. I had constant morning sickness for the first three and a half months, and was on an emotional knife edge. Even music from television adverts would make me start to cry."
But it was all worth it. Downstairs in the garden-level nursery sleeps Molly Megan, her daughter born after a 22-hour labour. "I'd do it all again," exclaims Beverley without a moment's hesitation, "because it's just such a miracle. And Mollie's such a placid baby. She hardly ever cries, and eats anything I give her."
Beverley's home - a large, sunny Edwardian family house with a small garden - is lovingly restored and decorated. She originally had the top flat, and Colin the basement. When the middle flat came up for sale, the couple snapped it up and set to work.
Her favourite room is the gardenside studio equipped with keyboard, mixing desk, compressors, tape-machine and comfy sofas. And she loves scouring an antique warehouses and junk shops for interesting and unusual pieces of furniture and china.
When it comes to Beverley's own personal style, her look tends to be classical and understated, with her wardrobe featuring such designers as Armani, Joseph and Nicole Farhi. As for a beauty routine, the brunette star has a no-nonsense approach, choosing whatever cosmetics happen to be to hand. But then, Beverley Craven has better things to do with her time.
"My manager's just called from Los Angeles to say there's a film needing a song. And besides, there's the wonderful thing about being a mother. I can't concentrate on myself in that way any more because all of a sudden there's something more important in my life. My child, my family life and my music. They're what really matter to me."
